The Japanese Journal of Pediatric Dentistry
Online ISSN : 2186-5078
Print ISSN : 0583-1199
ISSN-L : 0583-1199
Adhesion of Human Salivary Lactobacilli from Infants to Experimental Pellicles on HA
Ruka SakabeHajime TanakaJun SakabeIchiro NakajimaKunio HayashiMorito Akasaka
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2003 Volume 41 Issue 5 Pages 893-899

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Abstract
Nursing bottle caries is a type of rampant dental caries associated with prolonged bottle-feeding. Mutans streptococci have been thought as the principal microorganisms that cause coronal caries in humans. They settle in the mouth after the teeth are erupted because they primarily colonize tooth surfaces by utilizing self-synthesized water-insoluble glucan from sucrose. However, the number of mutans streptococci detected in milk-fed infants is very small. Mutans streptococci are not able to produce water-insoluble extracellular glucan from lactose that is a dominant saccharide in breast milk or in commercially available powder milk provided for infant formula. Moreover, some fractions of milk protein prevent mutans streptococci from adhering to the tooth surface. These imply that some other microorganisms than mutans streptococci may cause dental caries in the milk-fed infants.
On the other hand, lactobacilli are detectable in the mouths of infants. The detection rate rises from 30% at 4 months of age to more than half at 12 months of age. They are also known to be the most acidgenic and aciduric bacteria of human oral florae. They seem, however, unlikely to be a member of human dental plaque.
Hypothesizing that there must be some lactobacilli that show a certain affinity to milk pellicle on teeth in the mouths of infants, adhesion of lactobacillus collected from the saliva of infants to a few experimental pellicles derived from skim milk and/or human saliva formed on hydroxyapatite beads (HA) in places on human teeth were examined in this study.
HA was equilibrated in a phosphate buffered saline (PBS) and incubated either with 10% skim milk for preparing the milk pellicle (milk-HA) or with whole human decomplemented filtered saliva (DFS) from an adult subject for preparing the salivary pellicle (s-HA). Some aliquots of s-HA were further soaked in the skim milk for preparing the saliva-milk mixed pellicle (mix-HA). Bacterial cells were radiolabeled during culture, washed in PBS, suspended in DFS and challenged to the pellicles at a turbidity of OD550nm=0.1.
Mann-Whitney's U-test verified that only one out of 7 strains tested, Lactobacillus paracasei JCM 1133, adhered by itself to milk-HA and mix-HA (P<0.05). This strain was revealed to adhere to s-HA (P<0.05), too. In addition, although the amount was varied, it adhered to s-HA (P<0.05) prepared with DFS respectively derived from subjects including milk-fed infants and other adults.
It is therefore suggested that when a lactobacillus like JCM 1133 is introduced into a human mouth, it may be able to adhere to smooth surfaces of teeth, irrespective of milk consumption and age of the subject because the bacterium possesses a certain affinity to the saliva-milk mixed pellicle and salivary pellicle formed on the tooth surfaces.
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© The Japanese Society of Pediatric Dentistry
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